Retail sales facilities often permit consumers to determine whether a product offered for sale at the retail sales facility is in stock by scanning the product. Also, consumers often request sales associates and/or managers at the retail sales facility to check whether a product of interest is in stock at the retail sales facility. Having to perform a large number of scans for low inventory and/or out of stock items often takes up a large portion of time from department managers and/or sales associates at the retail sales facility.
When a product is determined to be out of stock at the retail sales facility via a scan by the consumer or sales or stocking associate, the consumer is typically informed either that the product is not available, or that the sales or stocking associate will go to the stock room to check whether the product indicated to be out of stock may be nevertheless present in the stock room. However, since the conventional inventory management systems do not provide the sales or stocking associate with possible locations where additional units of the product indicated to be out of stock may be present at the retail sales facility, the sales or stocking associates are often forced to physically check multiple locations at the retail sales facility to look for possible additional units of the out of stock product, which is time consuming and inefficient.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.